SimCity Offline Mode Is It Too Late?

by Farrel Nobel

EA officially confirmed that SimCity is now officially getting an offline single-player mode in the next update. hmm, That’s odd because I remember last year when they said this was close to impossible and that it wasn’t “part of the experience”. I wonder what changed. Frankly, I don’t really care. To be honest, I’ve never played SimCity but I really wanted to, key word being “wanted”. When I first heard about SimCity and how hyped up it was, I was hooked from the start. I’ve always wanted to try a city-building game and what better place to start than EA’s SimCity.

Just the thought of building something from the imagination of my mind, and having different scenarios like meteor strikes or alien invasions to happen in my city was like a dream! And then I heard about the Online-only mode which just shattered my hype for the game. As I continued to follow news and whereabouts about the game after its release, I felt glad I didn’t buy this disaster of a game. I kept reading complaints and news articles about how this game just didn’t meet expectations of anyone. And on top of that, the regular and massive server overloads during launch. I seriously don’t see what’s so awesome in online-mode that the entire game has to be played online.

I guess buried under endless complaints and criticism, EA finally realized – well over a year now – that they screwed this perfect opportunity up. EA had a cash-cow game that could make them big bucks and all they had to do was keep things simple and the way they used to be. But no, they had to try something new. I’m almost 100% certain that had they included an offline mode – which IS actually possible -, they would’ve given players a gaming experience that’s familiar to old Sim-city games and EA would still make a lot of money out of it. It was a win-win situation that they couldn’t realize until now. Honestly I think EA should have just left Sim City alone, forget they screwed the game up and move on rather than finally adding in offline mode a year after its launch. This just looks like a last ditch effort from EA to make some more money off a great series done totally wrong.

A gamer who gets impressed with a good narrative and (surprise!) some linear gameplay (but not too linear though). Started writing a few years ago. Contributor at Geekedoutnation and gameskinny. Check out my profile over there for more info! http://www.gameskinny.com/gs/farrel-nobel